Someone Like Me

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Audience Member Can't believe this is european production. Great film, human, full of warm humor. Even though film let you think a lot, it has very good pace and is fun to watch. Haven't seen this kind of quality for a while. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/13/23 Full Review Audience Member Xavier Koller caught our attention when his film Journey Of Hope won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1990, chronicling the touching tale of how a single postcard inspires a Turkish Alevi family to attempt emigrating to Switzerland illegally. Someone Like Me is his next big achievement in 2012 which received one win and five other nominations at the Swiss Film Prize (Oscar-equivalent for Switzerland), including Best Film. The film is based on the life Dällebach Kari, Switzerland's famous figure who is an inwardly torn hero born with a cleft palate, and his tragic love story. When Kari is born in Bern in the late 1800's, the doctor coldly tells his mother that he should be drowned because of his harelip - that way, the family would have one child less to provide for. Instead, Kari is brought up filled with tender love, and at the same time mollycoddled by his protective mother because of his imperfections. Kari however grows up to be a bright, charismatic man who aspires to have his own barber salon one day. And when he finally does, you would find his salon constantly swarmed with men queueing up for his service; not because of his exceptional skills with his hands, but it was his quick-witted and cheeky jokes that keep them entertained. Kari's charms one day lands him with Annemarie, a beautiful young woman from a middle-class family. Not only does she wants to dance with him at a party when they first meet, shocking her friends who all see nothing but his disfigurement, she's instantly smitten with his fragile and endearing personality. What starts off seemingly as a fairy-tale (finally) for Kari soon falls apart when their relationship is challenged by Annemarie's parents. Koller was first intrigued to make this film because he found the fact that Dällebach Kari was born with a physical flaw yet chose to be a barber, confronted by mirrors in the salon all day, very fascinating. The Oscar-winning director shared, "If I'm telling the story, I want to do it in a way that it goes under the skin, in a way that it shows the locations, such as Bern, in a light that you've may never have seen before. Basically, you should forget that it is a historical film, it should be a story that we can relate to it today too." And he did it with flying colors. What swept me off about this film is how its simplicity and guileless approach capture every important aspect of the story just right, making the period drama so relatable it's heart-rending. Kari's affectionate relationship with his mother is really moving to watch. With a magnetic score by Balz Bachmann, audience is taken back to the nineteenth and twentieth century Bern, whilst witnessing an honest and endearing romance. The film's triumph is finally sealed with a strong cast, led by Nils Althaus and Hanspeter Müller-Drossaart, playing the young and old Kari, with Carla Juri as Annemarie which won her Swiss Film Prize for Best Actress. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/03/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Someone Like Me

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